


The Color of Jealousy

by toffiendfee



Series: Initial D Oneshots [3]
Category: Initial D
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Hanahaki Disease, M/M, Unrequited Love, so much for me writing fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-25
Updated: 2019-04-25
Packaged: 2020-02-04 08:33:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18600874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toffiendfee/pseuds/toffiendfee
Summary: Keisuke can definitely think of better ways to be a supportive brother.(I love AUs. I love flower symbolism. I love angst. You know where this is going.)





	The Color of Jealousy

**Author's Note:**

> If you have never heard of the Hanahaki Disease AU, well, here's your first encounter and I swear you'll see it everywhere from now on. As I understand it, it came from a shojo manga and ended up becoming a popular fanfiction trope seemingly out of nowhere because it's very versatile and very angsty. And it gives you an excuse for flower symbolism, and who doesn't like that? 
> 
> It basically goes like this: The Hanahaki Disease is born from unrequited love. Flowers start growing in the patient's lungs and slowly suffocate them to death. Symptoms include coughing and/or vomiting petals and entire flowers. The disease is lethal, but can be treated by either having the feelings be reciprocated or getting a surgery which, along with the flowers, removes all feelings for the other person.  
> (That's the base concept, but I've modified and spiced it up a little for this story. You'll know what I've changed.)
> 
> Additional content warnings: Descriptions of illness that are not graphic enough to warrant the tag, and a very brief appearance of suicidal thoughts.

After several months of awkward conversations and mutual pining, Ryosuke and Takumi finally start dating.

Ryosuke and Takumi start dating and at first, everything is fine.

It’s really funny and embarrassing to watch them because they are so _awkward_ in the beginning. Their relationship is still young, and by all means it doesn’t look like it could even work. Takumi is as shy and awkward as ever and sometimes doesn’t even get a word out because he’s too flustered, and Ryosuke is so clumsy at being in an actual relationship that Keisuke almost laughs at his fumbling attempts to romance Takumi. Takumi isn’t one to be impressed by grand gestures and thinks they’re embarrassing. Even Keisuke could see that. For how smart Ryosuke was everywhere else, he could be really stupid when it came to things like these. 

Keisuke stops himself from laughing every time though because his brother looks so desperate when he fails and even Keisuke isn’t _that_ mean.

They end up growing into their relationship, though. At some point they start exchanging little kisses without blushing like it’s their first, and Ryosuke starts inching closer on the couch without having to ask, and Takumi starts teasing him like he has never done anything else.

And that’s the point when it starts getting really difficult to watch them. 

There’s suddenly this strange pang in Keisuke’s chest when he sees them together, and he thinks that he knows what it means, but he refuses to acknowledge it.  
After all, he hasn’t seen his brother this happy in a very long time. And he has never seen Takumi this happy, period. 

What doesn’t help is that they both tolerate his presence when they’re together. Keisuke knows that he should be happy that he’s not made the third wheel and that they sometimes ask him if he wants to tag along when they go out, and then he also says yes because he has never pretended to be a very smart person. 

And he tries hard to be happy. But the more time he spends with them together, the more it hurts. 

He gets to know the many ways they express their love for each other. There are the little things, like sharing their food, and their hands touching when they think no-one’s looking, and the deep looks they exchange. And in those moments, Keisuke can’t help feeling left out. 

The first time he feels that itch in his throat happens when the three of them are out for dinner at a restaurant. Not a fancy one, because Ryosuke has learned and let Takumi choose this time. They are both at ease sitting next to each other in their booth, and even though the table obscures his view, Keisuke would bet that their hands are searching each other. 

He coughs a little into the crook of his arm, but it does nothing against the itch. The other two give him questioning looks when he excuses himself to the bathroom, but he waves them off. “I’ll be back in a moment.”

When he bends over the sink and coughs and hacks and feels something sticking to his throat, he stubbornly swallows it down. He doesn’t want to know what it is or isn’t. Itch gone, he returns to the table with a carefree smile on his face and tries to ignore the heavy feeling in his stomach when Takumi and Ryosuke only have eyes for each other for the rest of the evening. 

~~~

Keisuke has never been one for roses. He has never felt the need to buy them for anyone. There are better gifts, in his opinion. Gifts that are less corny, and that don’t wilt after a week. Roses have always been more Ryosuke’s thing. And he always buys some for Takumi on special occasions, and sometimes with no reason at all. You’d think it gets boring after a while, but Takumi doesn’t look like he will grow tired of it anytime soon. His reaction is always the same: A mumbled thanks, an even quieter “you shouldn’t have,” and his face flushing an adorable rosy pink. It’s almost sickening to watch. 

Keisuke stares down at the silky petal in his palm. It’s slick with his spit and sticks to his skin, which is a bit gross to be honest, but not as gross as knowing that he has just coughed this out. Unless he has suddenly developed a habit of eating flowers (which he would hopefully know about), this means that it must have come from his lungs.  
He isn’t a complete idiot. He knows what this is.

But while he isn’t an idiot, he’s still great at being in denial. And thus, he crumples the familiar-looking yellow petal in his hand and throws it into the trash. Then he washes his hands and leaves the bathroom, trying to forget about what just happened.

~~~

If life was fair, this would be the end of it. But life wasn’t fair; especially not to Keisuke, the second-born, second-favorite, second-in-everything. 

The next time, there’s more than just one petal. Keisuke spends a little longer bent over the sink, coughing until the itch in his throat recedes and the white enamel is covered in yellow. Even like this, the petals are stupidly pretty. They look as if they’ve been plucked from their flower one-by-one and as if you could take them and glue them together to form a new one. Granted, some of them are crumpled and have tooth marks from Keisuke accidentally biting down on them while trying to spit them all out, but they are still pretty. 

They are, undeniably, rose petals.

Keisuke scoops them all up and dumps them into a plastic bag, and then he ties the plastic bag shut and takes it outside to throw it in the trash because he’s pretty sure a bag full of yellow petals in the bathroom trash would be suspicious to whoever empties it.

Takumi still comes over a lot, and Keisuke still can’t help himself and talks to him and jokes with him when Ryosuke’s not around yet because he’s stupid and has no sense of self-preservation. The immediate consequence of his choices comes in form of a torrent of yellow petals once he’s alone again. He has to be careful not to stare at them too much. If he did, he might start to hate that color and he’d rather not have that happen. The thought at least brings a little smile to his face.

He still looks forward to every single race. What he doesn’t look forward to is having to be around Takumi and watch him watch Ryosuke, all with an itch in his throat that gets harder and harder to suppress. He sometimes has to retch into the bushes when he catches the two of them kissing in secret after the rest of the team has left and when they feel safe. It’s honestly surprising that he hasn’t been caught yet.

At home, he has found a new method to hide his condition. The petals have become too much to store them in little plastic bags, so he gets one of the large blue ones and hides it under his bed. It’s a good thing that besides him, almost no-one ever enters his room. It’s his refuge and besides Ryosuke no-one has the nerve to navigate through the chaos he has given free rein to.

Even Ryosuke rarely sets foot into his room lately. Keisuke can understand that. Ryosuke has Takumi to spend time with, and he better appreciate every second. 

It's been ages since Keisuke last felt this nauseating little spark of disdain for his brother. His perfect, talented, intelligent, popular brother, who always seems to get what he wants, who’s going to step into his dad’s footsteps to become a doctor, and who should have long noticed that something was wrong. 

Keisuke tells himself that it is fine. Even his only true ally in this world could get so distracted by his luck that he didn’t notice some other things.

It wasn’t fine. It stung. 

But if he found out, what would happen? What would he do? 

Keisuke doesn’t even care. All he cares about is not to be so alone with this anymore. Sometimes he wants to shout at his brother, _“Look at me! Look how much I’m suffering!”_

But he doesn’t.

He is stupid, in denial, and a coward.

~~~

If Keisuke had thought that it couldn’t get worse, he was mistaken. 

He just can’t help it; he keeps staring, because besides petals in his throat, Takumi’s smile also makes him feel butterflies in his stomach. He never thought that he could love one person so much, but it gets worse with every single day they spend around each other. Keisuke likes to tell himself that this special smile is reserved just for him. Sometimes that makes him feel better. Sometimes, over shared stories and meals and hotel rooms, Keisuke forgets about everything but the butterflies. Wonders what would happen if he leaned forward now and kissed Takumi, just like that. 

Besides everything else, he’s also delusional.

~~~

He’s pretty sure that even his breath reeks of roses by now. 

He doesn’t know much about the Hanahaki disease, but enough to know that it will only get worse over time if he doesn’t start doing anything about it soon. It isn’t too common of a disease, fortunately, or else people would start dropping dead from unrequited feelings left and right. To get it, you needed just the right combination of infection, precondition, and a tendency to bottle up your feelings for whatever reason. 

Keisuke thinks that _“The one I love is already in a relationship with my brother”_ is a very valid reason. 

One evening, he returns home to a quiet house and the only light inside coming from Ryosuke’s bedroom. Keisuke has seen Takumi’s car parked outside. He stares at the thin line of light shining out from underneath the bedroom door. 

He doesn’t press his ear to the door to try and hear something, which reassures him that he has still a shred of dignity left inside of him. He needs to take an icy shower anyways. The water stings on his skin and he almost doesn’t feel the itch this time, but he still ends up coughing and retching and when he’s done, there’s an entire rose blossom sitting in the shower’s drain. He hopes that the sound of running water drowns out his coughs and his sobs, but he doubts that the other two occupants of the house have time to listen anyways. 

Full flowers instead of just petals are a bad sign; he knows that. The disease starts slow and keeps getting worse over time until the flowers inside the person’s lungs end up suffocating them to death.

It can be any flower, but when Hanahaki is portrayed in the media, it’s always roses. Roses, because they are so romantic. Because it’s so fucking romantic to spit out petals and flowers and blood.

The roses in the movies are always red though, as red as the ones Ryosuke always gives to Takumi. Red like love and passion.

What do yellow roses even mean? Keisuke tells himself that he won’t look up the meaning, but he ends up doing it anyway. 

_Jealousy. Betrayal. A broken heart. Friendship._

For some reason, it’s the last word that hurts the most. Keisuke suddenly feels furious; psychoanalyzed by some fucking flowers growing in his lungs. He almost throws his laptop against the wall just to watch the casing shatter and the screen die. He doesn’t. Instead he takes a deep breath and types into the search bar, _‘hanahaki disease.’_

He spends the next hour or so browsing. His search just ends up confirming what he already knows. Hanahaki disease, also known as ‘flower cough’ or ‘flower fever’ or a myriad of other names that he doesn’t care about. The cause: Strong unrequited feelings, mostly of a romantic nature. The treatment… Well. All Keisuke finds boils down to _‘confess and either have it reciprocated or get rejected and get over it.’_ And wow, isn’t that ever helpful? He has tried getting over it. He has tried for months and it only gets worse, and he doubts that an official rejection would help. 

Then, if neither of that works, there’s only _‘get the surgery or die.’_

It’s not like Keisuke has expected any good news, but it still feels like a punch to the stomach. 

He finds out that all the disheartening rumors he has heard about that surgery are true. He reads some first-hand experiences and patient’s reports and his heart sinks, because it’s even worse than he expected. 

They cut out the flowers, but that alone is not enough to remove the disease. They have to remove any memories of the unrequited love together with the flowers, because otherwise they would just resurface every time. Keisuke has just enough basic knowledge of medicine to know that cutting someone open again and again stops working at some point. The human body can’t handle that.

So, the other option. All memories of Takumi, gone. That alone is bad enough. But the more Keisuke thinks about it, the more he realizes how many other important things are connected to those memories. His drive to improve. His aspirations of becoming a professional racer. Important memories with his brother. Improvements, lessons, so many things that are absolutely vital to his life. And that’s only how his _own_ life would be affected. 

He closes the laptop. There are angry tears burning behind his eyes and he’s struggling to keep them in. If he starts crying now, he will definitely end up throwing something against the wall until it shatters. 

So. He will die, or he will die, or he will lose his future. Those are his options.

What great fucking options to have at the age of twenty-two.

This whole thing almost feels like a joke. Unfortunately, it isn’t one. Keisuke isn’t sure yet what to make of the fact that he’s become life’s punching bag. 

What’s he going to do? By now it settles in that he has to do something, because slowly and silently wasting away really isn’t his style. Then again, neither is falling head over heels for someone he can’t have. 

Ryosuke would probably know what to do. But like hell Keisuke is going to tell him of all people. What was he even supposed to say to him? _"Hey, I’m dying because I’m in love with your boyfriend?"_  
Yeah, sure. 

Keisuke bites back a furious sob. He can’t keep down the following coughs though, and cascades of yellow petals fall down on his bed. The attack lasts for what feels like hours, and between the petals Keisuke chokes on a couple full flowers that block his throat, stems and all. 

For the first time, the flowers are accompanied by blood. Maybe it’s the sight of the red dots and smears on the petals, but suddenly he can feel a sharp pain in his chest that violently reminds him that _yes, goddamn it, he’s dying._

And what a shitty, pretty, romanticized way to die this is. 

For a moment he considers skipping the pain and the choking and just running his car over a cliff to skip to the actual 'death' part. 

Then he thinks about Takumi again, and about Ryosuke, and a few other assorted persons (but those first two are the most important), and finally decides that he really needs to get some help. And yes, this is the actual moment that he does finally start crying. His laptop, as well as other breakable things, are thankfully covered by a layer of petals and Keisuke doesn’t have the mind to clean them up just yet. 

He covers his face with his arm and lets his sobs be muffled by his sleeve in hopes that nobody will hear, which is pretty futile because the coughing he has done earlier was anything but quiet. His chest hurts. His _everything_ hurts. Wherever his hands can reach, they only feel silky and damp petals and it feels like there’s nothing else anymore other than these cursed petals. His entire life is disappearing underneath them.

~~~

In the evening, when Ryosuke returns from his classes, Keisuke still has not moved from where he was sitting hours ago. He doesn’t answer to the knock on his bedroom door.

Ryosuke doesn’t know what he expected when he opened the door, but this isn’t it. There’s too much yellow, it’s everywhere and covers the natural chaotic state of Keisuke’s room with an entirely different kind of chaos. It looks like the color exploded across the bed, the floor and all the way up to the door. It takes him a second look to see that the yellow explosion consists of countless flower petals. For a moment, he wonders what has made his brother want to let out his anger on what looked like hundreds of yellow roses. 

He takes a step into the room. A petal crumbles under his right foot. “Keisuke…?”

There’s the littlest of movements from the body curled up at the very center of the petal explosion. Ryosuke doesn’t quite know what to say because he has never seen anything like this before.

Like this… Petals everywhere, piled around Keisuke like a blanket, and is that _blood…_?

_Hanahaki._

Ryosuke swears he can _feel_ the blood rushing from his face. He can definitely feel the way his heart sinks, and he hurries over to the bed, stubbing his toes on random trinkets hidden underneath a sea of yellow.

“Keisuke,” he says, urgently and yet hesitant, because he doesn't know _who_ and _how_ and if his brother is even willing to let him get closer right now, because at least he still knows how he acts when he’s like this-

He doesn’t, because now Keisuke does move and before he knows it, he’s pulled into a hug that neither of them would usually care about. When was the last time they hugged like this? He doesn’t know, but dear god, now Keisuke is actually crying into his shirt-

“How long?”, he asks. “How long?”

“Three months,” quietly answers Keisuke, who knows what he means. His voice sounds raspy. From the crying or the flowers, Ryosuke can’t tell. 

“You need to-“

“ _No!”_ The answer comes immediately and Ryosuke is taken aback by the force behind it. “No,” Keisuke repeats. There’s a finality to it that Ryosuke doesn’t like. 

“You will-“

Once again, he’s interrupted. “I know,” Keisuke says, sounding tired and desperate. “I know, but I can’t. It would destroy everything. Everything-“

Ryosuke lets his eyes wander across the room again, wander over the petals. So many roses are on that floor. How long do they have left? 

“Who is it?” He almost doesn’t dare to ask. “Who made you like this?”

But Keisuke just shakes his head against him. “Don’t… tell…“ 

He trails off and completely collapses against him, body going limp. But Ryosuke has already understood. Understands everything now. 

After all, yellow was the color of jealousy.

**Author's Note:**

> Did I just end this with a title drop? I think I did.
> 
> Look, I'm not saying this can't end in polyamory! That's the good things about open endings - you get to decide ~~and I don't have to commit to one ending or the other~~


End file.
